AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition Detailed

[btarunr]

In the beginning, there were NVIDIA Detonator and ATI Catalyst. Detonator made way for GeForce Software, but Catalyst pulled through for another decade. These are the brand names GPU makers use to label their drivers, because GPUs are devices that warrant frequent driver updates to keep up with new software and performance improvements. AMD, after consolidating most of its visual computing divisions into the Radeon Technologies Group under technocrat Raja Koduri, made its first major announcement, re-branding AMD Catalyst as Radeon Software. Its first release gets a special name - Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.11.

AMD's new nomenclature for its drivers involves firmly placing the Radeon brand name, replacing "Catalyst," followed by "software," indicating that these are not just drivers, but a suite of applications designed to give you control over your visual computing experience; with "Crimson Edition" being the major version for the year 2015-16, and 15.11 denoting November 2015, retaining the date-based version numbering scheme. These could come with extensions such as "WHQL" or "Beta." The first Crimson Edition drivers will be WHQL-signed.



At the center of Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.11 is the doing away of Catalyst Control Center (CCC) and Raptr, and in their place, a slick new application built from the ground up, called Radeon Settings. This app no longer relies on .NET, unlike CCC. Its user interface is minimalist, and keeps up with the Windows 10 theme, but its variations could blend with OS X and Linux GUIs.



The application is designed for fast startup, and features a ribbon-tab UI design, with a top bar selecting main settings pages, and the bottom one with minor settings and social buttons. With Raptr gone, game-specific optical settings are care of the "Games" tab, in which you can make graphics and hardware overclocking settings specific to a game, besides global settings.



The "Video" tab lets you choose between eight presets specific to viewing situations and content. The "Display" tab gives you settings specific to your display (resolution, refresh rates, Virtual SuperResolution, scaling, etc. There's a tab specific to Eyefinity that shows up when there is more than one display. And finally, the "System" tab gives you information on your current hardware and software environment.

The most important settings from the Radeon Settings app are neatly integrated into the context menu of the tray icon.

AMD will release Radeon Software Crimson Edition later this month.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[RCoon]

The first Crimson Edition drivers will be WHQL-signed.

Praise the Sun(TM)

AMD will release Radeon Software Crimson Edition later this month.

Does that translate to three months in real world time?

 

[Ferrum Master]

Faster opening time is splendid...

The last reptile that needs culling is Razer Synapse... gosh how I hate that thing... if there was an alternative that sets up the driver and mouse settings... but there is none on windows...

 

[Xajel]

It's a welcome change, sadly the name is not that much, the word "Catalyst" is very good indeed.. maybe the name should be "Radeon Catalyst" instead ??

 

[Finners]

I see they have bumped the frame rate target to 200FPS, sort of a necessity now with the 144Hz freesync monitors

 

[Ferrum Master]

word "Catalyst" is very good indeed..

Maybe we should bring back Detonator too?

 

[ISI300]

I dunno... I've used both Nvidia and AMD cards and in my worthless opinion the CCC is much better since the 2011 revision. It launches pretty quickly off an ssd and is much easier to use, for instance the per-app settings page is much snappier than Nvidia's is. Nvidia has faster DX11 drivers and adaptive v-sync which unfortunately AMD is adamant we don't need. The CCC on the other hand has much better video quality options. It seems we can't have the best of both.

 

[Mussels]

Dayumn, big changes ahoy.

take me forever to remember where things are now.


per game OCing is awesome, underclocking for older games is a fantastic idea.

 

[Mysteoa]

I aways related Catalyst name to the Chemistry definition as in accelerate GPU performance. I would have like it to stay but I'm not against the new one.

 

[Shihab]

Call me archaic, call me a philistine! But I think the no-nonsense old school standard windows' UI work best for these things.

Still, not a bad design, not bad at all!

 

[bpgt64]

Very very impressive. Aside from Nvidia's obvious anti-competitive tactics you have to give Geforce Experience a nod for it's functionality...Really hope AMD can improve this aspect of what there doing. Very much so looking forward to a 16C Zen CPU in 2016...and if they get this going for them with there GPU's I'll jump ship there too.

 

[Octopuss]

Uh, give me classic windows design. This is the Metro colouring book for 2 years olds from Windows 8 evolved into a version for 3 years olds.

 

[Cybrnook2002]

this is awesome!!

 

[Mussels]

I speak for all of us when i say we demand change and then hate it, but this actually seems like it could be simpler. It may take up more screen real estate to do the same thing, but if i can stop needing photo guides to tell someone how to adjust a single damn setting in the CCC, i'll be mighty pleased.

 

[GhostRyder]

This looks cool, personally I like the updated changes though I did not have much of a problem with the old CCC (Except when it was difficult to find a few settings or remember a few). I look forward to trying this software out!

 

[Assimilator]

This app no longer relies on .NET, unlike CCC.

CCC gave .NET a bad name, not the other way around. There are plenty of .NET apps that are fast and usable, it's really sad that ATI and then AMD couldn't write another.

This brand-new user interface ... is based on three fundamental principles ... the first is responsiveness, the second is discoverability, and the third is ease of use.

Congratulations AMD! You've finally learned what Microsoft knew... in 1995.

 

[cdawall]

Dayumn, big changes ahoy.

take me forever to remember where things are now.


per game OCing is awesome, underclocking for older games is a fantastic idea.

I'm pretty excited about this per game thing

 

[buggalugs]

This is huge. Getting rid of .net will make big improvements for stability. I remember when they first started using .net, I never liked it.

We are entering a new era of stability for radeon drivers.

 

[manofthem]

Sounds fine and dandy. Just better not suck. I hate bad software and I never use the older raptr app AMD tried to push in driver.

If this is a means to start bringing nice features, like what Nvidia has done with their GeForce experience, then I'd be willing to try that. Just hope AMD doesn't force driver updates via this Radeon software

 

[RejZoR]

And yet, I bet it won't have traybar controls. The current CCC tray controls are dumb, clumsy and useless. NVIDIA dropped them entirely and they had great design and usability. Still, it's improvement. The selection of FSAA levels in current CCC is moronic. You have to strictly click the dropdown menu arow, if you clock in the middle of the field, nothing happens. And they kept it this way for years, just because you just can't make any feedback to them. Which is again silly...

I'm on NVIDIA now, but I'm certainly looking forward to another Radeon graphic card knowing I'll experience a better settings GUI.

 

[KainXS]

really waiting for these CCC has always been a little laggy for me over the years, hopefully this will fix that.

 

[INSTG8R]

And yet, I bet it won't have traybar controls. The current CCC tray controls are dumb, clumsy and useless. NVIDIA dropped them entirely and they had great design and usability. Still, it's improvement. The selection of FSAA levels in current CCC is moronic. You have to strictly click the dropdown menu arow, if you clock in the middle of the field, nothing happens. And they kept it this way for years, just because you just can't make any feedback to them. Which is again silly...

I'm on NVIDIA now, but I'm certainly looking forward to another Radeon graphic card knowing I'll experience a better settings GUI.

Check the last slide But I do agree with you they are currently useless. I have SIX adaptors to choose from...Yeah helpful...

 

[bug]

Maybe we should bring back Detonator too?

"Detonator" was a stroke of genius (well, almost) back when the cards were called "TNT".

 

[GAR]

whats with all the hate on AMD, I have a Fury Tri-X running on windows 10 perfectly fine, drivers work great. I love both companies and own several computers in our development office both with AMD and nVidia, both working great, competition is good for business and good for the consumer, stop acting like little fanboy children, its stupid, none of these companies are paying you to advertise for them.

 

[cdawall]

whats with all the hate on AMD, I have a Fury Tri-X running on windows 10 perfectly fine, drivers work great.

CCC sucks. I have hated it for a long time. I still use AMD however.